Monoideism. 1. Focusing of attention on a single thing,
especially as a result of hypnosis; term invented by James Braid, one of the
first genuine hypnotherapists of the 19th century. 2. Major cause of everything
that goes wrong with music (and not just music) today, well illustrated by the
example of British/Australian twee pop band Allo Darlin'.

Going back to their debut album in my mind, I
can still distinctly remember the cute little brilliant melo­dies of ʽDreamingʼ
and ʽMy Heart Is A Drummerʼ, and the sweet-subtle excitement of thinking, «wow,
this is so promising, there is really a lot they could achieve from here». With
the release of the band's third album comes the ultimate realization: they are
not even trying to go anywhere else
because they never had any such plans from the very beginning. We cannot even
accuse Elizabeth Morris of turning out so much less talented than we thought
her to be — be­cause she has not the slightest intention to move her talents
away from the little green lawn that was carefully prepared, irrigated, and
fenced on Allo Darlin'. J'y suis, j'y reste.

If you are already head over heels in love with
the well-educated Australian girl who cuts her hair relatively short, plays the
ukulele, and combines hip intellectual lyrical imagery with a streak of quasi-chil­dish
idealism, and if you already wanted to sue me for all the bile spilled over Europe, this third record of theirs
will be an epiphany. To be fair, I think the melodies are a wee bit stronger
than on Europe, but it may be an
illusion — the band is certainly not studying any new chord progressions here
and not moving one step away from the twee-pop formula, so any ob­servable dif­ferences
are limited to nuances, well perceivable and significant only for major fans
whose eyes turn into magnifying glasses and ears into stethoscopes at the first
note of the uke.

No surprise that almost every review of the
album that I have seen immediately turns to the only aspect of the record that
is relatively easy to discuss — the lyrics and their realization. No sur­prise,
indeed, because now we know that Allo Darlin', the pop band, is really nothing
but a front for Elizabeth Morris, Singer-Songwriter (Extra)-Ordinaire, and that
their soft, lyrical, gentle, but rhythmic and tightly focused melodies are just
a mood-enhancing accompaniment for the world philosophy of Ms. Morris.

The problem is, that philosophy hasn't changed
much, either, and is getting a bit wearisome third time around. There is
nothing wrong with hazy-eyed romantic «can-I-really-really-make-this-sound-intelligent-rather-than-clichéd?»
confessions as such, but if they turn out to be your regular way of making a
living rather than a phase that you go through in life, there's something
unspea­kably wrong with that — I mean, Kate Bush's The Kick Inside has always been one of my personal favorites
indeed, but I would not be happy at
all if the rest of her career all consisted of innumerable clones of that
album.

And this is the way the title track begins:
"First snow's melting on the ground / And I can see my breath / In your
silhouette / And I remember what it felt like to be warm / And to be safe in
love". Uhh... okay. All right,
so maybe I was wrong here — maybe the
lyrics do not really matter, maybe this whole album is just Elizabeth's way of
saying "I want to hold your hand" on a slightly (very slightly)
advanced level of technicality. Maybe we should forget all about that
singer-song­writer business. But in this case, where are the great pop
melodies? If the words do not matter, give me great pop melodies, not just this
unmemorable jingle-jangle.

A tune like ʽSanta Maria Novellaʼ (the name of
one of the most principal basilicas in Florence) helps uncover some of life's
realities — namely, that the band, or at least its principal member, has
relocated to Italy where, according to her interviews, she teaches English for
a living because the band has no way of making any serious money. Strange as it
is, though, you could not guess that from the music, which bears no traces of Italian
influence (perhaps for the best, because I am not sure how Allo Darlin' would
have coped with a whiff of canzone
Napoletana) — yet knowing something about their struggles at least confirms
the single positive thing about We've
Come From The Same Place: as predictably monotonous as it is, Morris and
her pals are being true to themselves, and, unlike so many poseurs, only agree
to record stuff that is imbued with reflec­tions of real feelings, sifted as
they are through an intentionally intellectual "and you read your Emily
Dickinson and I my Robert Frost"-type verbal sieve. (Not quite as much
here as on the previous two records, though — even in a song called ʽHistory
Lessonsʼ, the only namechecked piece of historical reality turns out to be...
the Lion King!).

Probably the only song here that could have some
limited radio potential is ʽBright Eyesʼ, a duet between Morris and one of the
boys where she asks him "do you believe in fun? do you believe in
love?" in a thrilled exorcising voice and he calls back "I surely do,
I do if you ask me to" in the voice of a happy willing victim, fully
conquered through hypnotism (James Braid strikes again!). Additionally, this is
one out of only two or three songs where they allow their guitars to develop a
touch of distorted laryngitis (along with ʽHalf Heart Necklaceʼ), and Paul
Rains plays a nice guitar solo. Who knows, maybe what this music really suffers
from is the lack of sufficient con­tributions from the band's other members.

In the glowing AMG review — glowing, because
Morris does have this knack of melting the hearts of cruel guys with keyboards
— Tim Sendra called the album a collection of "intimate and true songs
about love, life and how to deal with each", and implied that only
somebody tired of hearing such songs could be dissatisfied with the record.
Well, strange enough, because (a) I do agree with the definition in general and
(b) I am in no way tired of hearing such songs, and am not prepared to ever get
tired of hearing them, and yet I am still dissatisfied. Mostly, I am dissa­tisfied
because, no matter how «intimate and true» these songs may be, the truth and
intimacy have turned into a predictable formula, like minor variations on the
exact same sermon that, for some reason, you have to attend every Sunday.

How do we mend this? I have not the faintest
idea, even if I am sympathetic enough
to the band to keep on hoping and wishing that it eventually gets mended.
Perhaps the first thing to do would be to write a song that tries to deal with
something other than the basic theme
of «me and you». How about «me against the world?» Nah, too pre­tentious for a
girl with a ukulele. Perhaps «me and my evil twin». On second thought, there's
no evidence so far that she even has
an evil twin. Maybe «me and my traumatic childhood experiences»? But I guess if
she had any, she'd have let the cat out of the bag a long time ago. Ah, forget
it. Just brace yourself for about fifty-six more Allo Darlin' twee albums that
will tweely explore the twee-sted relations between the protagonist and the
antagonist from all geometrically possible perspectives — under the Tower of
Pisa, on top of Notre-Dame, and, ultimately, at the bottom of Niagara Falls. As
the already mentioned Paul Simon also said, "there must be 50000 ways to say
weird crap about your lover".